Pattern of corruption
Philippine Daily Inquirer Asia News Network Manila
If he was looking for support, Sulficio Tagud Jr. of the Public Estates Authority (PEA) could not have found better allies than the 15 civil society groups that have signified their intention to sign up as complainants in the plunder case he will file against corrupt officials of the PEA.
Most of these groups, including Bayan and the Council for Philippine Affairs, were among the first to rally behind then- governor Luis Singson of Ilocos Sur province when he started exposing corruption in the Joseph Estrada administration.
Having been in the forefront of the successful struggle to bring down a president, they should find the PEA to be much easier pickings.
This time they don't have to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people to march in the streets. All they have to do is gather the necessary documents and present them to court.
The case against the PEA officials, led by board chairperson Vincent Villareal and president Benjamin Cariqo, looks quite simple and straightforward. According to Tagud, by approving the contract (and subsequent changes) to build a portion of the President Diosdado Macapagal Boulevard at the Manila Bay reclamation area, the PEA officials caused the government to lose as much as 600 million pesos -- possibly more.
Villareal has admitted that the road is "expensive" but denied that it is "overpriced", as Tagud, a member of the PEA board, has charged. Villareal makes this fine distinction in an effort to explain that the astronomical cost of the project stemmed from the complexity and difficulty of construction rather than the wages of corruption.
The original contract signed in 1999 said that JD Legaspi Construction would build a 2.3-kilometer section of the boulevard for 584.3 million pesos. To date, the PEA has paid JDLC a total of 837 million pesos.
The much higher cost was justified by some change orders, cost escalation and other modifications in the contract approved by the PEA board. At that price, this short stretch of asphalt road is probably the most expensive ever to have been built in this graft-ridden country.
However, showing a project is costly is not the same as proving it is tainted with corruption, right? But the beauty of this case is that there is an unassailable basis for price comparison.
The entire boulevard is 5.5-kilometers long. JDLC built only 2.3 kms, covering both ends. And how do the costs compare? DMWenceslao built a 1.8-km section for 102 million pesos, or 86,000 pesos per linear meter. Shoemart Inc. built 1.4 km at a cost of 77 million pesos, or 54,000 pesos per linear meter. And how much did JDLC bill the government for the 2.3 km that it built? A total of 699 million pesos, or 302,000 pesos per linear meter -- almost six times what Shoemart charged.
The same pattern of overpricing can be seen in the construction of bridges with Shoemart charging the PEA 552,000 pesos per linear meter, another contractor 1.1 million pesos, and JDLC 1.9 million pesos.
The reason PEA officials and JDLC gave for the much higher costs was that the portions it got were not well compacted and so there was a lot more work and materials put into the construction. What an unhappy -- or happy -- coincidence to have both ends of the same road poorly prepared.
It would be interesting to find out if there is a member of the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court who will swallow that line.
In the meantime, Tagud and his new allies should waste no time filing the case. If they tarry any longer, they might find their adversaries sitting in the House of Representatives, firmly convinced that they are beyond the reach of the law.